Cuba freezes dollar sales
Tuesday, May 11, 2004 (Havana):
Cuban officials announced on Monday that they were freezing most sales in dollars in response to new US proposals aimed at undermining the government of President Fidel Castro.
Officials suddenly halted most of the dollar sales that Cubans have come to count on and warned of higher dollar prices for food and gasoline.
Scores of agitated people lined up for last-minute purchases at late-night variety stores after the official declaration was read on Cuban state television shortly before 8 pm (2000 EDT) Monday night.
Raised prices
The announcement also said that dollar prices would be raised on food and gasoline - and perhaps other products if the stores reopen.
If maintained, the measure could have dramatic effects on life in Cuba, where many people depend upon goods purchased at dollar stores to supplement the scant, if subsidized items available at stores that sell in the local peso.
Sales of goods at dollar stores "are suspended until further notice," announcers on state television announced, reading an "official notice." Crucially, food and personal hygiene products were exempted.
It wasn't clear from the announcement if the seemingly profitable non-food dollar stores would reopen, but if they do Cuban consumers will be paying more for those goods as well as for dollar-priced food and gasoline.
Sparse availability
Nearly all gasoline - and hundreds of other goods - are either sold only in dollars or are so sparsely available at peso shops that they are effectively unavailable.
"The brutality of the measures adopted by the US government sadly will raise prices" at stores that sell in dollars, as well as in gasoline stations, the announcement said.
It referred to last week's recommendations by a US Presidential commission that were meant to hasten the fall of Cuba's communist system.
Commission report
Based on the commission's report, President George W Bush restricted family visits by Cuban-Americans to once every three years instead of the current one-per-year, and lowered the authorized per diem amount for a family visit to US$50, compared with US$164 now.
Bush retained the US$1,200-a-year limit on dollar transfers that Cuban-American families can send to the island, but limited those who could receive the transfers to immediate family members - excluding even uncles and cousins.
Recipients could not include "certain Cuban officials and Communist Party members."
Possible invasion
Cuban officials have portrayed the measures as a possible prelude to stronger US attacks, possibly even an invasion.
Permanent closure of the dollars stores would be a shift back to the centralist, socialist system in place before the collapse of the Soviet bloc forced Cuba into liberalisations that included legalization of possession of hard currency. (AP)